Cuba's Man-on-the-Street:
TEISON, HERBERT J.
CUBA'S Man-on-the-Street By Herbert J. Teison Havana The Government-controlled radio and television programs and newspapers in this former Caribbean playground were all concentrating...
...invasion was imminent...
...On two occasions, youngsters playing in the street looked up at me and whispered to one another, "Americano" The second time, I stopped to talk with them, three between the ages of 12 and 15...
...She is thinking of joining the militia, to which two of her sisters already belong...
...In fact, the man-on-the-street is bewildered...
...Fortunately, I still get a few pesos from outside my work...
...No doubt the difficulties between our countries will be arranged," was how one of them summed up the international situation...
...After school she teaches a class of adults to read and write...
...An avid newspaper reader and radio listener, Anita has absorbed a full measure of anti-American propaganda...
...The Government, however, picked up this bombing incident immediately and within an hour was blaring over the radio that the violence was the work of "Yankee imperialists...
...Their attitude toward Castro is reminiscent of the feelings of the people in the United States toward Franklin Roosevelt in the '30s...
...How can they be sure so quickly that the bombing was done by 'Yankee imperialists?' " After thinking for a moment or two, he shrugged his shoulders and replied, "I suppose everyone is a 'Yanquí imperialist.'" This shrug of the shoulders also characterized the attitude of the proprietor of a specialty shop with whom I talked...
...When you learn to fire your gun," I asked, "will you shoot me...
...He showed me other lines in front of the DIER, the Army intelligence office, made up of people waiting to get their military travel pass from the Government...
...She is con Fidel 100 per cent...
...It was nice...
...Now he may not have more, but he lost nothing in the revolution and has been promised everything in the future...
...He finds it hard to reconcile the taloned beast in the political cartoons with Americans whom he met when they came down here to gamble and take the sun...
...How often can they tell me the same thing and expect me to read it...
...Chances are that the average Cuban previously was a have-not or have-little...
...I asked him if he had seen the day's headlines announcing that a U.S...
...He cannot envision as diabolical the sportshirted tourist who would waste hours photographing the Mora Castle—a ruin that, as one Cubano put it, "I wouldn't even visit if they gave it to me rent-free for a year...
...Later, in a small all-night restaurant, he told me why the only thought in his mind was to get out of the country...
...We raise a few pigs, but I am afraid to raise more or they will take them away also...
...She was talkative to the point of verbosity about politics and about her personal problems...
...It had been triggered by a bombing a half-hour earlier in which a dozen or so citizens had been hurt...
...Though he had been educated in a church school, he had recently left the church...
...But when it comes to antiYankeeism, most of them take their lider maximo with a pound of salt...
...Though I was right in the middle of the crowd, did not chant or clap my hands and clearly look like a North American, I received only questioning looks from a few of the people around me...
...CUBA'S Man-on-the-Street By Herbert J. Teison Havana The Government-controlled radio and television programs and newspapers in this former Caribbean playground were all concentrating on one theme when I arrived last month: "yankee invasion imminent...
...One exception was the cab driver who gave me a free trip around Havana at 4 am...
...As soon as I told them that I was an American they became reticent and embarrassed...
...he asked rhetorically...
...they take away my house, my land...
...When they found I spoke their language, they thought that perhaps I was Russian or Polish...
...But his over-insistence and over-enthusiasm made one wonder...
...Why do all these people want to leave...
...This is especially true when it comes to hating people whom he has traditionally regarded as friends...
...Even soldiers take the Government's hate campaign with a grain of salt, if the two whom Ï picked up while driving through Pinar del Rio Province are typical...
...These,, then, are a few of the people I met and drank and talked with in Cuba...
...The Cuban, like most people, is reluctant to hate on the basis of an abstract concept...
...She introduced me to her mother, her four sisters and one brother (who tried to speak with me in his halting high-school English...
...I was able to build myself a small country place...
...But neither I nor any other American had harmed her...
...The young people appear to be much taken by the Russians...
...All the time they watch me...
...I heard this on the radio of a cab in which I was riding...
...The emotions of the crowd were essentially pro-Cuba rather than antiYankee...
...Every few weeks they come and ask questions...
...One example is Anita—a Latin version of Elizabeth Taylor—who under the previous government had tried unsuccessfully to get a teaching license...
...Herbert J. Teison is a free-lance journalist who recently completed an extensive tour of Castro's Cuba...
...Anita, like the others with whom I spoke, knew Americans only as friends...
...But while talking to more than 100 Cubans—in homes, shops, cabs, bars and bordellos—I found that this campaign is failing to instill in them a hatred for North Americans...
...he answered...
...Now she has a license and teaches secondary school in a cooperative in Oriente Province...
...I then asked if he had also read the details of the story...
...Before [everyone refers to the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship as "before"], I was the head of a small construction firm...
...He said that he had...
...Nor can the average Cuban understand why Fidel Castro, who he feels is doing so many positive things, is at the same time trying to create this unrest and hate...
...And on posters, billboards, bus-fare receipts and match boxes direct or implied anti-Yankee propaganda was the order of the day...
...yankee dynaMITE FOUND...
...Those that I met were so taken up with their antiGovernment feelings that there seemed to be little room left for either pro- or anti-Americanism...
...accompanied by handclapping in unison in the best traditions of mass hysteria...
...It must be stressed, of course, that the man-on-the-street in Cuba today bears little resemblance to the Cuban who has left the country...
...He argued that they were better engineers, scientists, etc...
...Of course, there were those who were anti-Castro also...
...The Russians are also better tippers," was his parting shot as I left the counter...
...Now...
...We grew a few things...
...He showed me the lines of Cubans in front of the American embassy waiting for visas (they were still being issued then) which would not be good until November 1961...
...They leave me only this car which I use as a taxi...
...When the broadcast was over I asked the cab driver...
...Despite this, she was as warm and as friendly with me as she is with her own people...
...Clearly, Fidel (who, he claimed, had eaten at his counter that very day) is his hero...
...bomb factory confiscated...
...Still they don't leave me alone...
...They were enthusiastic about Fidel, yet they did not believe there would really be a conflict between Cuba and the U.S...
...As a group, it was the young people whom I found to be most affected by Government propaganda...
...If anti-Yankeeism ever does take hold in Cuba, it will capture the youth before all others...
...There was much chanting of "Cuba sí, Yan quí no...
...When I get enough together, I will take a small boat late at night and head for Key West...
...A young man of about 17 years old, working behind a lunch counter, attempted to debate with me the superiority of the Russians over Americans...
...He wanted me to know that he was living the best of all possible lives, and that things would be great for him and for his country from now on...
...To get to work she must rise at 5 AM and ride over seven miles on muleback...
...At one point in my visit to Cuba, I found myself in the middle of a spontaneous demonstration of some 1,000 Cubans in downtown Havana...
...The question upset her and she hesitated before answering weakly, "If you come to take my country, I suppose I would shoot you...
Vol. 44 • February 1961 • No. 6
